Revere Journal Article

The following article was written by my brother, James Rich. It was published in the Wednesday, November 21st edition.

Every day you open the newspapers, watch the news on television, listen to the radio, or read stories on the Internet, it’s about bad people, who have done bad things. All too often good people, good deeds go unnoticed.
I’d like to take this opportunity in this article to recognize one of the good guys, my brother, Dennis Rich, a former native of Revere, who recently passed away from cancer at the very young age of thirty-eight.
Benjamin Franklin once said of being remembered by posterity, “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about.” My brother, Dennis, without doubt, fell into the latter category.
The stories about him are numerous, and although they seem mythical, and in some cases apocryphal, they were not, for Dennis was larger than life…in so, so many ways. Ask anyone who knew him, even vaguely, and they will all tell you the same thing; there was something special about Dennis Rich.
In short, he had so much charisma. He was the action hero in movies, the guy who won the game with a last second touchdown, the guy who got the prettiest girl, he was the guy everyone wanted to be, including me.
The earliest recollections I have of Dennis are of him protecting me; holding my hand to make sure I crossed the street at the right time, making sure that there was a piece of candy, or toy, that he had just received, also for me. He was forever watching to make sure I was okay.
I have told this story before and I will tell it again and again, for as long as I live. This goes to the heart of who Dennis was - a person who loved his family and friends and would do anything to protect them.
I call it the Pop Warner Story. I am around ten years of age and Dennis is one year older. I am playing on the C team, and he is on the B team. If you anything about Pop Warner football you know that teams play one after another. Well I am, if I am lucky, a 100 lb. running back. I get the ball and get tackled after a short gain. The guy who tackles me starts a fight with me on the ground. To my surprise, no one on my team does anything. As I am fighting to get up, I see the blur of a blue jersey grabbing the other player and throwing him to the ground. I soon realize that it’s my brother, Dennis. He’s not even on my team and he comes onto the field to defend me!
Despite the fact that our team received a major penalty, I will never forget our coach, Frank Pesce, berating the other players after the game, explaining to them that it should have been one of the guys on our team, and not Dennis, who had to come to my aid.
From his earliest days, Dennis stood out as a great athlete. He was such a natural that he could play any sport and instantly excel at it. In football, he was a star the moment he stepped onto a field for the first time at age 6. And this carried forward straight through college, where he stills holds many school records.
Many still speak of the game in high school, against Brookline, which he won single-handedly, playing nose guard at 135 lbs. He loved sports, especially the competition. Ask anyone who had to face him on any ball field and they’d tell you; he had the fighting spirit of 10 men.
Dennis, to me, defined the word cool. During our years at Revere High School, it seemed as if he dated every pretty girl in his entire class…and also my class. I distinctly remember a time when I was a sophomore, and he was a junior, and I heard his name being bandied about by some guys, whom I did not know, about his dating a beautiful girl from another town. It was like he was a celebrity, and in many ways he was.
Dennis was such a genuinely nice person that he made friends anywhere and everywhere he went. This was one of the reasons that he was so successful in life. He not only made friends easily, he kept them. He remained close with people from all different stages of his life. He had such a varied group of friends, from so many different walks of life, that, if you met them, you would be amazed that they would in any way be connected; but through Dennis they were.
The reason people found Dennis so endearing was his generous nature, his caring personality and his willingness to always be there for his family and friends. He would do anything for someone he knew, and in some cases, for people who he didn’t even know.
There was the time at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, where he and I both went as undergrads. Dennis, being who he was, was very popular with both the male and female students. Well, one evening, while we were living in the dorms, we were sitting with a large group of friends, enjoying dinner, when Dennis spots a guy sitting all by himself. Dennis says to the guys at our table, “Geez, that poor kid is always by himself.” Before anyone could say anything, Dennis had invited the other guy to eat with us. The other student, Paul Griffith, although we have lost touch with him, became one of our best friends for the next two years.
Dennis was extremely bright. He had natural intelligence. He was one of those guys who didn’t have to study very hard to ace a test. He was one person who could truly have done anything he wanted.
As a young child in middle school, he was selected as a member of a very small group of academically talented children from all over the city of Revere. After a distinguished high school career, where he was elected junior class president, he went on to the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and studied engineering. He then went on to graduate school at the University of South Florida. Shortly after graduating, he moved to Atlanta, Georgia because he wanted to experience life in a different part of the country. After a few years, he decided he wanted to come back to Boston and be with his family. Always yearning for new challenges, he decided to change careers and become a stock broker. He immediately passed the examination with flying colors. It was at this point that he met his wonderful wife, Jodi, had three beautiful daughters and bought a home in Wakefield. In 2003, always wanting to work together, he and I started Rich Construction. Dennis got great satisfaction out of the fact that the company instantly did well and that he got to work with family.
Dennis loved life like no one I have ever met. You will not find a person who ever met Dennis who will say he didn’t always have a smile on his face. He was always up for anything. You could call him on a moments notice with Patriots, or Red Sox tickets and he would always be in. You could ask him, last minute, to get a barbecue together with family and friends and he would be in. You could ask him for just about anything, any favor and he would be all in. He would try anything he had never tried before, go anyplace he had never been, do anything he had never done.
In the last few years, since Dennis was diagnosed, I’ve asked myself many, many times, as I know he did, why? Why him? The only thing I can come up with is this - he had so much good luck his entire life; he had great looks, a great physique, he was tremendously athletic, he was extremely bright, he had a great sense of humor; it was like someone said, “this guy has been too lucky”.
For those of you who never met my brother, Dennis, you really missed out on a wonderful experience. For those of you who did get to enjoy the pleasure of his company, you know exactly what I mean. He was a person who, once you met him, you would never forget.
A few weeks ago, on October 22, the toughest day of my life, I lost my best friend and brother, but even more sadly, the world lost one special guy.